


nothing going, going wild

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e11 Josh Is the Man of My Dreams Right?, F/M, One Shot, episode insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26918620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: Rebecca sighs, stabbing her pen deep into the pad of paper. Going to Nathaniel's house to tell him she definitely hasn’t been thinking about their time in the elevator is a stupid idea anyway. She just really wants to brandish her shiny new wedding date in front of him, hold it up as a clear boundary for him to examine. Rub it in his face how wrong he’s been about her. And maybe get a peek at his bedroom.
Relationships: Rebecca Bunch/Nathaniel Plimpton
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	nothing going, going wild

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Bethany, for reading this over!
> 
> Listen, I know that 2.11 is a perfect episode, so why am I tinkering with the ending? Well, sometimes inspiration strikes and we follow its whims. Written to fill the prompt "things you said that made me feel like shit."

“Did you not sleep well last night?”

Rebecca—who definitely didn’t sleep the night before for thoughts of seeing Nathaniel again after the weekend that lasted ten years—blinks at Paula, uncomprehending.

Paula gestures at Rebecca’s coffee mug with her pen. “That’s, like, your eighth cup this morning.”

Another blank moment passes, and then Rebecca bleats out a too-loud laugh. “Oh, Paula, you and your hyperbole.”

“Honey,” Paula says, as her eyebrows scale her forehead. “You don’t have to go through with this, you know.”

Images of dragging Nathaniel off to some exotic land where they can forget about Josh and she can find out what else he knows how to do with that tongue of his outside of delivering lines referencing Harry Potter that make her weak in the knees and _kissing_ flash through her mind.

“Paula!” Rebecca straightens in her chair a little too aggressively, and hot coffee slops over the side of the mug and onto her skirt. “Of course I’m going through with this wedding! Why would you suggest that I’m not going to?”

“Oh, sweetie, no,” Paula says with a frown. “That’s not what I meant.”

Rebecca tries to think back on their conversation, but her brain hits a wall. Recall capabilities more than five seconds into the past are currently shot. She blinks several times in succession. “Wait, what did you mean?”

“It just seems like this deadline is stressing you out, that’s all,” Paula says, drawing a little flower in the corner of the file on top of her desk. “You haven’t sent the invitations yet, right? You could still push the date back.” She looks up then, eyeing Rebecca meaningfully.

Rebecca pretends not to notice. “Right, the deadline. Yes. Stress. Because planning a wedding is hard.”

“Right.”

“But totally doable!”

“I…guess,” Paula says.

“Exactly,” Rebecca says after a big gulp of her coffee. “And your support means the world to me. It’s what’s going to get me through this whirlwind.”

As it was meant to, the comment softens Paula. Her worry-crinkled forehead smooths as her face relaxes into a smile. “I’m sure knowing you have your whole life with Josh to look forward to doesn’t hurt, either.”

This time, her mind montage is of sweaty karate clothes stinking up her laundry and nights of ceding the television to Josh for another boring video game and year after year of him talking her into going to Scarsdale for the High Holidays because he actually likes spending time with a fasting Naomi for some reason.

Rebecca feels her jaw twinge as she grinds out a smile. “Uh-huh.”

With that, Paula turns her attention back to work. Left unscrutinized, Rebecca cranes her head to look over at Nathaniel’s office. He has not, in fact, magically appeared in there all of a sudden.

“You know,” Paula says, and Rebecca jolts, snapping her attention back to her own workspace. “I bet you could find a way to take off work, get Karen to fudge some unused paid time off again.”

“You really think so?” Rebecca asks, a twitch of a smile on her lips as she imagines turning the tables on Nathaniel and not showing up to work for a full week. Agitating him with her silence.

“It’s worth a shot,” Paula says, already refocusing on her computer screen. “If you can talk Nathaniel into letting us all keep our jobs, who knows what else you could get that man to commit to.”

Rebecca’s stomach jumps up into her throat before slamming back down into her pelvis.

“Hey, speaking of Nathaniel,” she says, casually as she can manage, “do you know where he is today?”

Maya, who happens to be walking by in front of Rebecca’s desk, stops dead in her tracks. “Do you want to hear my theory?”

“Go away, Maya,” Rebecca says.

At the same time, Paula says, “For the last time, it’s not psychological warfare.”

“You don’t know that,” Maya says, her eyes growing larger behind her glasses. “You think it’s a coincidence that he sent around a memo about the consequences of taking sick days just before disappearing? No!”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Paula says.

“I bet he’s watching us right now,” Tim says, appearing at the edge of Paula’s desk all of a sudden.

“Oh, god, do you think that’s true?” Maya asks, reaching up to smooth down her hair.

Rebecca rolls her eyes.

“Imagine if you guys put as much work into your jobs as you do inventing conspiracy theories,” Paula says. “Then Nathaniel wouldn’t have to resort to mind games to get anything done.”

“So you agree,” Tim says, nodding sagely. “That’s what he’s doing.”

“He did have me send him a bunch of files via a courier to an undisclosed location first thing this morning,” Maya says. “It was all secretive and weird. What do you make of that, huh?”

“He was probably having them delivered to his secret lair where he spies on us,” Jim says from his desk.

“You guys are all idiots,” Mrs. Hernandez supplies.

Paula nods. “He probably just doesn’t want the whole office knowing his address. And who could blame him.”

“Nuh-uh,” Maya argues.

“Rebecca, back me up on this,” Paula says.

“What?” Rebecca jerks out of her own thoughts. “Oh. Right. So stupid.”

They all take a moment to stare at her, evidently underwhelmed by her response.

After a beat, Paula shakes her head and then breaks the silence. “You know,” she says. “If he is watching us, he’s probably pissed about how much time we wasted talking about this.”

“Like the black widow incident all over again,” Tim says, laughing. However, the memory of the fit Nathaniel had thrown sobers him up almost immediately.

They scatter at once.

###

Rebecca stares down at her list of ways to obtain Nathaniel’s address, frowning thoughtfully.

1\. Hack the courier’s phone and track where they’ve been today (Paula’s help needed)

2\. Call Plimpton, Plimpton & Plimpton impersonating – who? His mom maybe? Get the inevitably overworked secretary to give me the address to his WC residence. Could claim I’ve misplaced it?

3\. Crack the password on his email (Paula’s help preferable)

4\. 

She sighs, stabbing her pen deep into the pad of paper. Going to his house to tell him she definitely hasn’t been thinking about their time in the elevator is a stupid idea anyway. She just really wants to brandish her shiny new wedding date in front of him, hold it up as a clear boundary for him to examine. Rub it in his face how wrong he’s been about her. And maybe get a peek at his bedroom.

Not because she wants a clearer image of where he spends each night or anything. It’s just, you can tell a lot about a person by their bedroom. Sheets. What’s on their nightstand. And that’s valuable information to have because they work together, not because she has any designs on his personal life or whatever.

“Snack time!” Paula’s declaration breaks into Rebecca’s reverie. “You coming?”

“Oh, no,” Rebecca says, rushing to pull a proposal over her list. “Really working hard here. Don’t want to kill my momentum.”

Paula frowns but doesn’t comment on the obvious lie. “Suit yourself.”

Once she’s walked away, Rebecca uncovers her list, staring blankly at the lopsided number four she hopefully carved into the paper. Four, four, four. Like the number of horsemen of the apocalypse…the number of emails she’s drafted to Nathaniel since getting to work. Or the total number of hours she slept this weekend.

A muscle under her eye twitches. Suddenly she hates that number.

With a shaky hand, Rebecca hastily tries to cross it out, but just ends up leaving a mark next to it. Like a slanted one.

Fourteen. Like the number of days until her wedding.

She pops up out of her seat. It’s not until she’s closing the door to Darryl’s office behind her that she realizes her over-tired brain was coming up with the simplest, most elegant plan without letting her know.

“Howdy!” Darryl says brightly. “To what do I owe—”

“I need Nathaniel’s address,” Rebecca says.

“Cutting right to the chase,” Darryl says, pointing a proud finger at her. “I like that you’re getting in the spirit of our new company culture.”

“Sure,” Rebecca says. “Whatever.”

Darryl’s already searching his inbox when Rebecca circles around the back of his desk.

“What do you need this for anyway?” Darryl asks, writing the address down on a post-it for her.

“Uh—” Rebecca’s brain stutters and, dammit, she probably should have actually run through the plan instead of trusting her subconscious. But just as she’s berating herself, the perfect, Darryl-proof answer falls into her lap. “I need to know where to send his Welcome Aboard present.”

“Oh,” Darryl says, clutching his heart. “I love that.”

“Uh-huh,” Rebecca says, snatching the post-it out of his hand. “On an unrelated note, I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

“Wedding stuff?” Darryl guesses.

“In a manner of speaking,” she says, and then does her best not to break out into a run as she leaves the firm.

###

Nathaniel’s apartment complex is unexpectedly yet mercifully lacking in security. Rebecca’s able to park, get inside, and access the elevator all without encountering gates, buzzers, or guards.

She’s so distracted by her own relief that it doesn’t occur to her she should have some kind of plan until after she’s knocked on his door.

It takes her a second to recognize the person who answers as Nathaniel. Instead of the usual suit and tie, he’s wearing only an undershirt, briefs, and a throw blanket over the top of his head, and his eyes are exhaustion-rimmed, his skin sallow.

Rebecca can’t help herself. She starts to laugh.

“You’re not Postmates,” Nathaniel says in what’s probably meant to be an accusatory tone but mostly just sounds full of mucus.

She throws back her head, laughing harder.

“Excessive,” he says, and then turns and walks away from the door.

“Sorry,” she says, not feeling it at all. “This is just…karma outdid itself.”

“Karma?” Nathaniel says. “For all I know, you did this to me.”

With a scoff, Rebecca steps into the apartment, her eyes zeroing in on the bed to her left—where Nathaniel’s clearly headed. “Excuse me?”

“You seduced me knowing full well you were sick,” he says, falling face-first into his rumpled sheets. Which are boring gray. Not that she notices.

The door falls closed behind her.

“I’m not sick,” she says, charging over to him. “Clearly.”

“Really?” he asks, turning his head. The throw blanket inches back off his forehead, and some of his hair flops down—free of product—in its place. “You look unwell to me.”

She stands up straighter, crossing her arms over her chest. “For your information, I’ve been awake for most of the weekend. Having sex with Josh. Because we were both so happy that our wedding is now in two weeks.”

She’d imagined Nathaniel’s reaction to her news going a lot of different ways. Outrage. Tears. A couple of late-night _come away with me_ scenarios she’s decided not to dwell on. But never confusion. Of course, fantasy Rebecca is generally much better at nailing the delivery.

After blinking at her for several long seconds, he heaves a sigh. “That’s why you’re here, is it? Because you think I give a single damn about how hard you’re trying to convince yourself that Josh is the man of your dreams?”

She’s hurt for all of one second. Then she’s laughing again. “You give so many damns, it’s pitiful, really.”

“I am _not_ ,” he says, sitting up suddenly, “pitiful.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asks. “Then what’s this sick day all about?”

“It’s possible my body is punishing me for trying to incorporate bananas into my morning routine,” he says, jutting out his chin.

“Please,” Rebecca says. “I used to be you, remember? Sick days were for people who cared about something other than the job.”

“I don’t care.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, eyes roving over him. She gets stuck staring at his exposed thighs.

He shifts, an affronted whine getting stuck in his throat.

They’re thick in a way that’s not-so-obviously muscular. She wants to wrap both her hands around one of them, hold onto the circumference. She wants to sink her teeth into them like they’re turkey legs served up at a RenFair—or quite possibly she’s just hungry.

“What’d you get from Postmates?”

He lets out a bemused huff at the conversational swerve, but he still answers. “Chicken broth.”

She waits a moment, but when he doesn’t say anything else, she feels her eyes bug out. “That’s it?”

“Yes,” he says curtly.

“Gross.”

He rolls his eyes. “Okay. I’m not going to listen to your opinions on comfort food when it’s clear you indulge in it as often as possible.”

“Yeah, dude” she says. “That’s why my life is so much better than yours.”

“Is it now?”

“Yes,” she says, “it is.”

He hums skeptically. “Sure. That’s why you’re here.”

“It’s why I’m leaving, actually,” she says, taking a backward step for the door. “How fun with your miserable ‘sick day’.”

He sneers at her air quotes and, moving improbably fast for how terrible he looks, catches her by the wrist.

“Funny thing about misery,” he says. “Mine will run its course in a few days. But yours? Yours will last a lifetime.”

He pauses, the silence thick, and Rebecca’s gaze travels up the length of his arm to his face of its own accord. He’s staring at her with ice-shard eyes.

“If you go through with it, that is,” he adds, voice rough with more than just exhaustion.

“Of course I’m going to go through with it,” she says, shaking her hair back over her shoulder and looking at him down the bridge of her nose.

He smirks like he knows just how uncertain she is, like he can shred through her comfortable lies with his gaze alone.

With a growl building in the back of her throat, she wrenches her arm free of his grip. And then she’s stepping between his thighs, grabbing hold of his face and kissing him.

Unlike last time, his hands don’t hesitate. He’s gripping her waist and crushing her to him the second their lips connect. It snatches her breath away, and she presses her mouth harder against him, like she can fish the stolen breath back out with her tongue.

“Can’t breathe through my nose,” Nathaniel says a second later, turning his head so he’s speaking into her wrist, his stubble tickling the palm of her hand.

She’s about to tell him to figure something out when there’s a knock at the door. She jumps back at the same time he pushes up onto his feet.

Their eyes meet, and they both glance away immediately.

“Hold that thought,” Nathaniel says as he steps around her and goes to answer the door.

“Enjoy your meal,” Rebecca hears a woman chirp and Nathaniel grunts before pushing the door closed again.

He glances into the bag and grunts again. “Unbelievable.”

Rebecca takes a step toward him, still dazed. “What.”

“This is chicken noodle soup,” he says, pulling the carton out. It’s all steamed up in a way that makes her stomach rumble. “I knew I shouldn’t have left a tip. I was very explicit in my instructions, and they managed to screw up anyway. Typical of this town.”

She takes a few more steps, grabbing the soup out of his hands. “I think you should leave a bigger tip, actually. This is so much better.”

“How?”

“Because now I can have some, too,” she says, heading for what she hopes is the hallway to his kitchen.

It is.

He follows after her, leaning in the doorway.

“You’re supposed to be at work,” he says, as if it’s just dawned on him.

“So are you,” she shoots back, setting the carton of soup down on his counter and opening random cupboards in search of bowls.

He doesn’t answer, and when she glances over her shoulder at him, she reads in his face that he wants to argue the point.

“So let’s just pretend,” she says, pausing in her looting to hold onto his glower as she extends her olive branch, “that the real versions of ourselves are where they’re supposed to be. We’re alternate-reality Nathaniel and Rebecca.”

He raises his eyebrows, doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

She’s about to try and smooth the comment away, ramble so much they both forget the offer was ever made.

But then he says, “I presume alternate-reality Nathaniel eats soup with noodles in it?”

She grins.

###

“I can’t believe you don’t own a television,” Rebecca says, propped up by a mountain of pillows on Nathaniel’s bed and cradling a bowl of soup against her chest.

He’d put up a fight, of course, about letting her in his bed without the immediate goal of getting off and then about letting her in his bed with food. But she’d simply ignored him, sweeping stray tissues down onto the ground and crawling up onto the plush mattress like it was something she did all the time.

He huffs in response to her comment, curling in on himself even tighter.

“Still with the silent treatment?” she asks. “I haven’t spilled even a drop.”

He sneezes, and then reaches for a tissue. She watches as he folds it neatly in half before dabbing at his nose and rolls her eyes.

“This is so _boring_ ,” she whines before slurping down the dregs of her soup.

“Please stop that,” Nathaniel says after a moment.

“Ha!” she says, setting aside her bowl. “You talked to me.”

He rolls over to face her, frowning. “I believe you could annoy anyone into compliance.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It sure sounded like one.”

“To someone with brain damage, maybe.”

“Big talk coming from a person who’s actually clearly a robot in disguise.”

He props himself up on his elbow, punching at the one pillow she’d left for him. “I’m a robot now? I thought I was an alternate version of myself.”

“You were sent by the government to spy on the firm,” Rebecca says, nodding. “That’s how you have access to parallel dimensions.”

Nathaniel snorts derisively as he drops back down, letting his eyes drift closed. “Spy on Whitefeather? There’s nothing useful there.”

“There’s valuable data on workplace incompetence,” Rebecca says. “And Paula.”

“Please,” he says, shaking his head. His product-free hair dances and shimmers in the sunlight pouring in, thick, through the window. “If they’re gathering data on anything it’s the impact of excellent leadership on small economies.”

Rebecca snorts.

“What?” he asks peevishly.

“Nothing,” she says, watching as the irritated lines in his forehead deepen. And, because she’s alternate reality Rebecca and consequences have no meaning here in this little bubble of an apartment, cut off from modern comforts, she drags her fingers through the tuft of hair hanging limp over his forehead.

He unclenches disorientingly fast, a hum rumbling loose in the back of his throat. Like he’s purring, almost.

She pushes her fingers deeper into the bristly hairs at the side of his head.

“It’s just,” she says after a few silent moments, “West Covina has a way of changing people, not the other way around.”

He grunts, eyes blinking sleepily open. “This _happiness_ bullshit again?”

Rebecca curls her fingers, scraping at his scalp with her nails. “It’s not bullshit.”

“You’re happy?” he asks, eyes hooking into her and keeping her from pulling away. “Really?”

She stares at him, reading an invitation in his expression. Considering it.

“I’m…happier,” she says finally.

He huffs a humorless laugh. “Whatever that means.”

“Aren’t you tired?” she asks, snatching back her hand.

He props himself up on his elbow. “Of what?”

“Of pretending like it means anything,” she says, avoiding the sharp, cool calculation of his stare and squirming her way down the pillow mound until she’s flat on her back. “Of piling up favorable court rulings and calling it a life? Of trying so hard and never having anyone tell you they see you? That they’re proud of you.”

He’s silent long enough that she can no longer stave off the craving to look at him. So she turns her head to find him staring down at her, ice-shard eyes warming to ocean-in-the-midday-sun.

“I’m answering as alternate reality Nathaniel, right?”

“Okay,” she says, nodding.

“In that case,” he says, and then pauses to lick his lips. “Maybe I do see how coming to this town, coming to Whitefeather, would count as changing for the better.”

“But?”

He gives her a wan grin, his head tipping forward in acknowledgement. “But I think you know you haven’t actually found what you’re looking for. Not yet.”

“Why would you say that?” she asks, eyes fixed on his mouth.

“Rebecca,” he says, and she likes watching him form the word. Likes that he can’t seem to help himself savoring it, even when he’s brandishing it as an admonishment. “Why are you here?”

She bites her lip, tearing her eyes away. “Speaking as alternate reality Rebecca?”

“No,” he says, sitting up fully. “Speaking as the Rebecca who knew what she wanted when she showed up here.”

She sits up, too. “Hey, I let you answer as your fake self! Fair’s fair.”

“You wanna know what I think?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.

With a groan, she pushes herself to the edge of the bed and stands. “Not especially.”

“I think you’re here because you’re looking for any excuse not to deal with how unfulfilling your relationship with the flip-flop is.” Nathaniel gets up from the bed, too, tall and unwavering. “You’re here because you _want_ me to tell you how stupid it’d be to marry that loser.”

“Okay, he’s not a loser,” she says, rounding on Nathaniel. But her righteous wagging finger does not reach anywhere near his face. “And I’m getting so much fulfillment out of being with him. Oh, yeah, he _fulfills_ me every night! Sometimes twice!”

“Then what do you keep kissing me for?”

“Because!” Rebecca whines, grabbing fistfuls of hair around her temples. “I don’t know! You’re pretty!”

“Just admit it, Rebecca,” he says, and her name is a taunt this time. “He doesn’t _see_ you.”

He leans down so his face fills her field of vision.

And, fuck everything, all she really wants to do, even now, is kiss him again.

“I have to go,” she says, stumbling backward.

“Fine by me,” Nathaniel says. “You weren’t welcome here in the first place.”

###

###

“I’ll admit that you look happy.” Nathaniel’s voice sounding low in her ear makes Rebecca start. “It sets my teeth on edge, but still.”

“You’re distracting me,” she says, swatting behind her without taking her eyes off the conversation happening out on her porch between Josh and her dad.

“Right,” Nathaniel says, straightening and smoothing a hand down the front of his shirt. “Wouldn’t want to mingle with your guests when you could be staring at the _man of your dreams_. Who, I might add, you’ll be looking at for the rest of your life. You should really spend some of the party ogling others before you’re no longer a free woman.”

Rebecca turns to him then—though she keeps her dad and Josh locked in her periphery—and offers up a smug grin. “Convinced I’ll go through with it now?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

She huffs. “Okay, well, whatever the other way is, I don’t care.”

Talking over her, Nathaniel says, “I realize now that your ability to lie to yourself far outshines your desire for happiness.”

“Hey, Nathaniel?” she says, batting her eyelashes at him.

“Hmm?”

“Thank you for getting my dad here, I really appreciate it, but I also couldn’t mean this next part more.” She pauses. He raises his eyebrows expectantly. “Fuck off, okay?”

He laughs. “See you at the wedding, Rebecca.”

_You’re marrying Josh_ , she tells herself as she watches Nathaniel walk toward the door, fists clenched at her sides. _You’re marrying Josh and your dad is walking you down the aisle and nothing else matters_.

And by the time Nathaniel’s shaken Josh’s hand—making pointed eye contact with her through the window—she feels the glitter once again whipping up, a tornado of it in her chest.

_This_ , she thinks triumphantly. _This is what happiness feels like_.


End file.
